Witches, wizards and wonders

Wirksworth Wizarding Day 2024 

They gathered. Wizards, witches, young students, aged crones, occasional babies, the venerable and the unspeakable.... And I was there, spilling a hat full of stories...Wirksworth Wizarding Day was back!  This is always a lovely day and I miss most of the action....I heard about magical markets and the excitement of buying wands, about places to eat, a London Double-decker bus to get on....lizards, snakes and dragons to meet (I suspect that was before the actual moment when anticipation was running high). Someone had seen a Dementor. Someone else wrote a spell to turn people into zebras and was going to go and sit in the market place and try his spell. We reckoned if people didn't change on the outside they might change on the inside and find themselves sitting down to meals of grass....

 

And I was there telling stories: a day of non-stop tale-spinning, yarn-calling, and spell-shaking. Tales of mystery, malice and strangeness: a reminder that we live in a world full of wonders and enchantment even if we don’t see witches, wizards, and dragons as often as we might wish

 

In the aftermath, scraps of wizarding books were found on the floor, in corners, tucked for secrecy into recesses or hidden under chairs...We thought we should share them...

 

Wherever possible original spelling has been retained

 

 

 

WIZARDING DAY SPELLS

 

Fangtooth

FANGTOOTH by Sia

Do not even go neer to a Fangtooth or it will eat you bit by bit. first your feet then your legs and soon and soon. There are not that many left in the wild. there is one left but it is the most dangerous

 

SLYTHERIN

Sly, cunning and mysterious

Like snakes we are

You can't hide from us

Though you have a lightning scar

Harsh and mean we'll be

Even if you do fight back, or

Run, or fly away
In the end, you'll
Never win

 

Peter the grobllin

To turn into a black panther

Although this is written as a single recipe, it feels like 2 voices: try it with one person reading the yellow words and a helpful friend (who is rather worried!) reading the black!

 

Put black lizard tales

And poisoned frogs inside (a cauldron)

No-one has every survived

The potion won't be easy

Herbs and spices will not help (but stir anyway)

Eyes from a hungarian horntail (finish the brew)

Run for your life!

 

FROG SPELL

Get a caldron

and fill it with water

add 3 layers of brown paint

add stinking socks

add a newt's eye

boil for ages

Drink.

Start hopping.

 

A Summoning Spell

 

From deep ponds, I call you

from Rippling stream, I call you

Out of garden wall and flowerbed, i call you.

Great creatures of a damper world

Squat before me now!

 

As the moon rises and

Night draws in and the

Darkness fills the world

Touch my enemies with nightmares,

Once a night,

And every night,

Disturb their sleep with

Slime.

 

POTION OF TRANSFORMATION

This brews a lotion to rub on a wizard’s feet and turn him or her into something else.

No-one has ever watched this potion in action and been able to report back on what it does!

 

Take

 

1 long tail of a rat, and

2 handfuls of crushed snail shells, throw in

3 bones, well-chewed by a dog, and

4 egg cups of graveyard dust

5 whole chillis will make the brew strong and

6 cups of water will fill the cauldron but

7 matches are needed to light the flame

 

Brew the cauldron

Over a dried moss flame, and stir with an

Ivy-wood spoon and never, ever

Lick that spoon!

 

useful advice from a Witch's cupboard

Mice and

Umbrellas and

Green

Wellies will

Often

Result in disastrous

Toasted marshmallows

 

 

Wirksworth Wizarding Day is an annual event in October that transports the small town of Wirksworth in Derbyshire into a more magical realm

Find out more: https://www.wizardingday.com/

https://www.facebook.com/wizardingday/

With many thanks to Coach House Studios for giving us such a lovely space for stories and to all the eager ears (and associated bodies) who joined us for storytelling, who shaped spells, who laughed, groaned and 

were suitably (or unsuitably) excited by everything!

 

Brooding anger, festering rage

 

Bind your anger into bone....

a story of different perspectives

 

There is a carving in a collection of artifacts from northern cultures in Buxton Museum. Tupilak carvings are quirky characters, hovering somewhere between engaging and horrific. The stories behind them are even more intriguing as these figures carved in whale tooth and bone are illustrations of a much grimmer original. Made from discarded flesh, bones and skin, original Tupilak have apparently never been seen by people outside of those indigenous cultures and are bound around with stories of anger and revenge. I am storyteller. I was captivated.

 

I am a storyteller. Yes, I tell stories. I enjoy talking. But as a storyteller, I also need to be a story-listener. I need to absorb other stories. That might be from other people talking and telling. It might be as a quieter listener as I read books. It might be listening to whispers on the wind, the long low rumbling stories told by stones or the sighing voices of the waves breaking on the sand. 

 

The film below grew out of these accounts and stories with a generous helping of my imagaintion thrown in  and with many thanks to Aidan Rhode for making the film and Ros and Ben from the Buxton Museum for adding their voices

 

 

 

As a listener, Tupilaq* stories intrigued me:

 

"You are to bite Nukúnguasik to death; you are to bite Nukúnguasik to death."1

 

There is a mystery around these. Built from the dismembered remains of animals by arctic magicians (lots of different northern cultures have Tupilaq or similar – Inuit, Igluulik, Caribou) to execute ferocious revenge on their personal enemies, Tupilaq were (or are?) agents of vengeance. But to make one was risky for the magician wo sends it plunging into the icy sea or across a frozen waste to find his or her foe, for if the supposed victim turns out to a be (or have the support of) a stronger magician than the maker, then the Tupilaq might be turned back and might return its need for a life to consume, for a warmth to steal, thwarted. Until it comes scratching at the door of that first magician’s tent….

 

 

Tie flesh to flesh,

To bone,

To hair,

To skin,

To pain,

To anger,

Tie to the blade of a vengeful mind,

To the harpoon of an intention,

To the ax of a soul,

Tie pursuit

Tie destruction

Tie a long bitter revenge

Tie death at the end of anger.2

 

And Tupilaq were made in secret, so secret it is said that no-one outside of those cultures has ever seen a real one. As western explorers met the northern peoples and heard the stories, they were fascinated. So local people started carving Tupilak to sell, trade or give away to those explorers. The Tupilak we see in our museums are not Tupilak: they are tourist shapes: bone and teeth carved into drama: tusks, flaring nostrils, fins, hands, tails. They are vivid, striking carvings, but do they hold the essence of Tupilaq?

 

But I am a storyteller, a listener, and so I went and listened in the abandoned cold and dark, listened for the voices of the Tupilak who told a different story. They speak of the end of anger. Of brooding hatred built into their frozen, sliding flesh but then released with their melting, returned to the snow, dwindling, diminishing with the thaw, returned to the snow and the sea, the wind and the stone. A different story.

 

Buxton Museum and Art Gallery has a Tupilak carving. It emerged from a box of wonderful bits in the County’s School Loans Collection that is being carefully dismantled by a team at the museum. Treasures are being found new homes: joining relevant collections in other museums, some may be returning to long-lost homes or finding new homes in societies and community groups. As one of the Museum’s ACE Emergency Response artists, I’ve been immersed in the richness of those polar artifacts. Bone tools, wooden carvings, a stone lemming, exquisite kayak models, a shaman carved in bone, caught in a moment of transformation from human to goose. And a Tupilak

 

They are a challenge as they offer another question to the ongoing collection of storyteller questions I have been building through this Buxton Museum project:

“what do you hold onto despite everything and what do you let go of?”

 

Do you hoard your anger like treasure, a golden trove of brooding bitterness? Or like the hero escaping in a story, do you throw your anger over your shoulder? Maybe like the vanity of a comb that springs into a hedge of thorns and prickles to thwart pursuit or the mirror that becomes a lake and give you the chance to escape

What do you need to be free of to be ready to become something new?

 

 

Rage in flesh, anger in bone,

Envy, greed, and malice,

Caught in this festering flesh.

And lost with it.

To the wind,

to the storm,

to hungry beaks and tearing jaws

Tupilak is

Lost to the thaw

And all anger is released.2

 

 

 NOTES

*Tupilak or Tupilaq: no-one seems quite sure if there is a correct spelling. I like both!

1.from:  Eskimo Folk-Tales, by Knud Rasmussen, [1921]

2. poems are lines from the story poems in the Tupilak film you can visit here

Images:

From the top:

Kayak model and Tupilak carving: BMAG collection, G MacLellan

Tupilak: wikimedia commons

Thumbnail from Tupilak film

GIVING AWAY BOOKS....

Clearing bookshelves

Hallo, everyone out there!
I’m trying to shuffle through my bookshelves and have the first of (hopefully) several batches of books up for grabs if anyone wants any of them!

There are two main sets of books here...
folktales and environmental education and art activity books
magical books

These are free to anyone although I would appreciate it if we could sort for you to pay postage!


Just let me know if any of the attached interest you. I’ll do it on a first come-first served basis

Either pm me or drop me an email: creepingtoad@btinternet.com

Best wishes
Gordon

MAGICAL BOOKS: ALL THIS SET OF MAGICAL BOOKS HAVE GONE TO NEW HOMES....MORE COMING ON LINE IN A DAY OR SO!

Ref	Author	Title	Publisher	ISBN
25	Baker Douglas M	Astral projection	Aquarian 1977	0-85030-141-6
6	Brennan, JH	Reincarnation	Aquarian 1981	0 85030 275 7
3	Butler, WE	How to develop Psychometry	Aquarian 1983	0 85030 180 7
3	Butler, WE	How to develop Psychometry (2 copies)	Aquarian 1983	0 85030 180 7
28	Butler, WE	The Aura	Aquarian 1979	0 85030 179 3
9	Cavendish, R	The Black Arts	Pan, 1967	0 330 02223 7
8	Clough, Nigel	Magic Mirros	Aquarian 1977	0 85030 129 7
15	Conway, D	MAgic, an occult primter	Mayflower 1972	582 12179 9
7	Crow WB	Occult Properties of herbs & plants	Aquarian 1980	0 85030 196 3
16	Daniken	Miracles of the gods	Corgi 1981	0 552 10371 3
35	Drury, Neville	The occult experience	Hale, 1987	0 7090 2961 6
24	Fenton, Sash	Fortune telling by tarot cards	Aquarian 1985	0-85030-369-9
17	Hansen, C	Witchcraft at Salem	Arrow 1971	0 09 003910 6
20	Hirsch, P	Supernatural	Pyramid 1968	0 511 01833 060
36	Hope, Murry	Practical Greek Magiic	Aquarian 1985	0 85030 430X
2	Howard, Michael	Candle Burning	Aquarian 1977	0 85030 122X
2	Howard, Michael	Candle Burning ( 2 copies)	Aquarian 1977	0 85030 122X
4	Howard, Michael	The magic of the runes	Aquarian 1980	0 85030 233 1
1	Hunt, Douglas	Exploring the Occult	Pan, 1971	0 330 02648 8
22	Lee, D	Understanding the occult	Paperback Library 1969
23	Line, D & J	Fortune telling by runes	Aquarian 1984	0-85030-367-2
13	Maple, E	The Domain of Devils	Pan, 1966	0 330 02231 8
27	Markham, Ursula	Fortune telling by crystals	Aquarian 1987	0 85030 510 1
11	McCormick	White magic for lovers	Fontana 1973	0 00613351 7
12	Michelet, Jules	Satanism and Witchcraft	Tandem 1970	0 4260 4204 2
29	Montalban, MAdeline	The Tarot	Javelin 1986	0 7137 1784 x
18	Moss & Keeton	Encounters with the past (hypnotic regression)	Penguin 1981	0 1400 5587 8
26	Neilsen & Polansky	Pendulum Power	Excalibur 1984	0-85454-077-6
34	Norvell	Mystical Power of pyramid astrology	A Thomas 1978	0 85454 091 1
14	Pauwels & Bergier	The morning of the magician	Mayflower 1972	583 11970 0
5	Rendel, Peter	Introduction to the Chakras	Aquarian 1979	0 85030 161 0
19	Seth, R	Witches and their craft	Tandem 1967	0 4260 4968 3
21	Seth, R	In the name of the devil	Arrow 1970	09 003040 0
33	Walters, Derek	Your future revealed by the Mah Jongg	Aquarian 1982	0 85030 290 0
30	Weaver, Graham	A to Z of the occult	Everest 1975	0 903925 29 3

ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION AND STORYTELLING

Ref	Author	Title	Public	ISBN
102	Barber, Chris	Ghosts of Wales	John Jones, 1979
117	Barker, Clive	Theatre Games	Methuen, 1977	0-413-45380-4
124	Bennett and Taylor	Living Planet	TickTock 2006	1-86007572-X
123	Dearling & Armstrong	New Youth Arts & Crafts Book	RHP1996	1-898924-75-9
110	Dearling, alan et al	Youth Action and the Envrionment	Russell House Publishing, 1997	1-898924-07-4
127	DfEE	All Our Futures, creativity, culture & education	Crown copyright 1999	1-84185 034 9
103	Dunne, John J	Irish Ghosts	Appletree, 1999
114	Finnigan	The complete juggler	Jugglebug, 1991	0-9615521-0-7
106	Grubb, et al	Earth Summit agreements (Rio, 1992)	Earthscan, 1993	1-85383-176-X
107	Hough, Richard	You Can Save the Planet	A & C Black, 2007 (for The Guardian)	978-0-7136-8688-3
105	Howat, Polly	Tales of Old Cambridgeshire	Countryside, 1999
101	James, Henry	The Aspern Papers	Penguin Classics, 1994	0-14-062097-4
109	Johnson, W.H.	Kent Stories of the Supernatural	Countryside, 2000
100	LENIHAN, EDDY	IN SEARCH OF BIDDY EARLY	Mercier, 1987
122	Lynas, Mark	Carbon counter - calculate your carbon footprint	Collins Gem, 2007	978-0-00-724812-4
126	CEE Youth Unit	Go For It Pack	1980s?
115	Mabey, Richard	The Unofficial Countryside	Sphere, 1978	0-7221-5709-6
118	Maine, Sandy	The Soap Book, simple herbal recipes	Interweave, 1995	1-883010-14-4
119	Morrison, Blake	songs of sacred places, children’s poetry in the year 2000	Sacred Land, 2000
126	Pike & Selby	Reconnecting from National to Global Curriculum	WWF 1995	0-947613-70-6
104	Pugh, Jane	Welsh ghosts and phantoms	Emeralda, 1979
116	Russell, James	How to turn your parents green	Tangent, 2007	978-0-9553520-9-6
108	Rutherford, Leo	Book of games and warm-ups for group leaders	Gale Centre Publications, 1994	1-870258-30-4
111	Sinclair, David	Shades of Green, myth and muddle in the countryside	Paladin, 1991	0-586-08708-7
121	Stott, Robin	The Ecology of Health, Schumacher briefings	Green Books, 2,000	1-870098-80-3
112	Timberlake and Thomas	When the bough breaks: our children, our environment	Earthscan, 1990	1-85383-082-8
125	Walker & Shioman	The Wisdom of Bones (in search of human origins)	TSP1996	0 297 81670 5
120	Wood, B	Our world, God’s world: reflections for Advent and the Christmas Season on the environment	Bible Reading fellowship, 1986	0-900164-69-7
113	Wyland, Creech & Balogh	Hold your water! 68 things you need to know to keep our planet blue	Andrews McMeel, 2006	0-7407-5682-6